While you live in my house, you’ll follow my rules!
I won’t let you choose another place to live, even if the people who own it are willing. My house, my rules!
I’ll strictly control what skills you develop and resources you amass that are relevant to being able to live on your own. My house, my rules!
I’ll deny permissions legally required to get a license or a job that I don’t want you to get. My house, my rules!
If you manage to get out of the house anyway, I’ll call on the government to force you to come back. My house, my rules!
I was thinking about this idea while reading Wisconsin v. Yoder, and specifically William Douglas’ dissent. Yoder is a classic free exercise case: it concerned a law mandating education (public or private) through high school, pitting the interest of the state in seeing to it that its citizens were educated against the right of Amish parents to not violate their traditions and beliefs. The Supreme Court sided with the Amish.
Justice Douglas’ dissent centered on the argument that there were three parties whose interests in this dispute were relevant, not two. Basically, “has anyone thought to ask the kids what they think?”
To be specific, there’s one party whose interests in this dispute are relevant. Both of the other interests are basically bullshit.
OTOH, the party whose interests are most relevant is also typically significantly cognitively impaired, has atypically high time preference, is not legally permitted to have a job and financially support themself, and so on.
Yes, that’s true, and that’s why someone else usually has to try to take care of their interests, but that doesn’t mean the caretakers’ interests are in any way valid; only their attempt to faithfully act in accordance of the only relevant party’s interests is.
The state can go [do something it can’t actually do because it doesn’t have anatomy] with its interests about its citizens; the child’s interests to be educated or not are what matter.
And the parents can go [do something they are probably religiously prohibited from doing] with their tradition; their ability to (possibly, depending on the circumstances; oftentimes they do, sometimes they don’t, and that’s why shit’s hard) know their child’s interests better than the state is the thing that matters.
I mean, I’m pretty strongly pro child’s rights, but the idea that a guardian has no interests in the matter is absurd. Being a guardian doesn’t (and shouldn’t) mean you’re a slave to your child’s Optimal Best Interest, and I certainly don’t want the state deciding what that is even if it did.
E.g. sometimes I may need to shower even if Colton really wants to be held and will scream the whole time if I don’t. And I could forgo the shower, and he would be better off in the moment if I did. But I’m not obligated to just because I’m his guardian.
Okay, that’s firmly within “your body, your rules” imo. Being a guardian only gives a reasonable set of obligations.
I don’t consider children entitled to limitless bending-over backwards, but I do consider them entitled to certain freedoms; for example if a parent for some reason had decided that preventing their child from accessing information on lgbtq people was in their interests of ~religion~ and ~tradition~, they should basically cuck off with their interests. Violating a child’s self-determination and choice requires way better reasons than “but I wanna”, but a child isn’t entitled to violate their parent’s self-determination and choice for frivoulous reasons either.
In the example where the options (school or homeschooling) are both basically legitimate I wouldn’t consider either of the offered arguments a valid reason for deciding differently from what the child would choose. There are possible reasons to override the child’s choice on this matter, but neither “the state wants its citizens to be this way” or “the parents want religion/tradition” are acceptable to me. (The parents are certainly allowed to freely express their views to persuade their child but if the child wants something else I do consider it a violation of the child’s freedom of religion to forcibly convert them or make them follow the rules of a religion that isn’t theirs.)
(ETA: the distinction I’m talking about at least somewhat resembles “negative vs. positive rights”)
… I mean if you’re going to go with negative vs positive rights at all then you’ve basically abolished the entire concept of guardianship. Which, like, is theoretically satisfying but completely ignores the actual nature of actual children.
Also I think we need to distinguish “the things we want the government to stay out of” from “the things that don’t violate children’s rights” from “the things that are immoral as a parent”. IMO the 1st is larger than the second at least given current form of government, and the 2nd is larger than the 3rd, but even the third has a lot of degrees of freedom that revolve around parents actually making choices for children.
I mean “it resembles” in the way that it seems to have something similar; not that it’s actually that much about the same thing. But I do think that overall parents are erring way too much on limiting minors’ freedom and the criteria for “you aren’t allowed to do that”/”you must do this” should be stricter than “just because I want and I’m in a position of power”.
And the degree of should obviously depends on the situation; the state needs to heck off most of the time (the exact degree of hecking off should change though; less policing of “do parents act like a domestic NSA in the name of “””safety”””?” and more protection of children’s bodily autonomy against assault and abuse and I don’t know whether the total would consequently be significantly lesser or somewhat greater but it would be better) and I don’t subscribe to the authoritarian theory which treats all valid targets of politics as valid targets of state action.
So in the original question, if the child wants to go to an external school but the parents want to homeschool, they would need to come up with a better argument than “it’s our religion/tradition”. And similarly if the child wants to homeschool and parents are willing (if parents aren’t, then it’s remarkably simple) to do it, the state would need to have something much more solid than “muh social engineering tho”. There obviously are questions where parents’ interests are relevant but I don’t accept either of these particular arguments (unless they were just abbreviated very harshly and the originals in the court case were way more relevant).
1 week ago · tagged #youth rights · 151 notes · source: shlevy · .permalink
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raginrayguns said: Finally read this post after seeing only the top line a while ago. I’d assumed it was going to be venting about your mother in law leaving the sponge in the sink, and got progressively more confused as I read
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socialjusticemunchkin reblogged this from shlevy and added:I mean “it resembles” in the way that it seems to have something similar; not that it’s actually that much about the...
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shlevy reblogged this from socialjusticemunchkin and added:… I mean if you’re going to go with negative vs positive rights at all then you’ve basically abolished the entire...
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metagorgon said: this is about the caretaker’s interests in the child’s decision, not the caretaker’s own interests.
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ilzolende reblogged this from socialjusticemunchkin and added:OTOH, the party whose interests are most relevant is also typically significantly cognitively impaired, has atypically...
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